When 12 year old Ishmael Beah is touched by the Sierra Leone Civil War, his life completely changes. He loses his home, his family, and everything that was dear to him. He loses contact with his parents when he travels from his hometown to another village, to never find them again. He escapes the attack with a couple of his friends, but they are split up, to never see each other again. He is often captured by the rebels of the war, and is lucky to escape every time. However, as he travels in search of his family, he meets people who help him survive. As hard as he tried to escape the war, Ishmael eventually became a boy soldier. He was drugged and given a gun and became a cold-blooded killer. After two years of fighting in this gruesome war, he was rescued by UNICEF, and was sent to a camp to rehabilitate. With the help of people at the camp, he was able to come back from the cold-blooded killer the war had turned him into. He then traveled to the United States to speak for Sierra Leone and what the Sierra Leone Civil War was doing to children and what it turned them into. He was then adopted by a woman called Laura, and came to the United States and has lived here since.

A Long Way Gone is a very emotional book, with many moments of suspense and mystery, as you never knew what would happen to Ishmael. At times, he did not even know himself as it was happening. The book uses flashbacks to go back to who Ishmael was before the war, giving us more of a connection with who he was, and making all the events that happened to him seem like it was not just some person, but a friend. The most shocking thing to think about when reading this is to think that this all really happened to a person. Ishmael and more than 300,000 other children had to observe the deaths of their families, dead bodies, burnt down villages and many other horrible things. This makes you consider how comfortable life can be for people living in 1st world countries, who would never have to go through such tough experiences like these. It helps understand that the world is filled with violence and hate. This book makes you consider that your small problems might not be the biggest problem there is. There are people who right now, fight for their lives and have to kill others and do things that they would never do to survive. All of these experiences are a mental scar left on them, something that they may never get over. They will live with this the rest of their lives and will suffer because of it.

Ishmael Beah also makes the reader see that this is a very important issue. The events that happened there in Sierra Leone needed attention and needed help from the world, and Ishmael’s book helped people realize that.